Ankr, a decentralized blockchain infrastructure provider, will introduce Bitcoin (BTC) liquid staking tokens to its AI-centric blockchain Talus starting May 1.
“Bitcoin is not only the oldest blockchain, but it continues to have the highest liquidity,” Ankr wrote. “Unfortunately, this liquidity has traditionally been trapped within Bitcoin L1. Ankr’s liquid staking service allows you to stake Bitcoin through various Bitcoin re-staking protocols. This allows users of the Bitcoin network to earn additional staking rewards while providing access to Bitcoin liquidity to other ecosystems.”
To participate in Bitcoin decentralized finance (DeFi), users first delegate their BTC to the operators of the restaking protocol and then use it as collateral for Ankr to create BTC liquid staking tokens (LST). For Talus, Bitcoin LST can be used to power smart agents or AI assistants and their applications on the blockchain, such as “travel bookings, online purchases, and portfolio management.”
Talus’ smart agents can also bundle multi-layer atomic swaps and execute them as a single transaction, providing security exploits such as flash loan attacks. “Ankr’s BTC liquid staking unlocks massive amounts of liquidity for Talus’ smart agents to seamlessly execute simultaneous DeFi transactions such as atomic swaps,” Talus said.
This move comes after Ankr unveiled its first Bitcoin liquid staking product with Babylon Protocol in early March. The project allows users to “profit from idle Bitcoin in a secure way” by pledging Bitcoin as collateral for the issuance of LSTs, which can be used to verify transactions on the Proof-of-Stake blockchain.
Profits earned from staked LST are then funneled back into the user’s locked Bitcoin. Currently, the Babylon Protocol is in the testnet phase, with mainnet launch scheduled for later this year.
Despite ongoing market corrections, the Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem has thrived over the past year with the invention of new protocols such as Ordinals, Inscriptions, Atomicals, and Runes.
One such project, SolvBTC, an omnichain monetization protocol, has secured a total value of $700 million in monetized Bitcoin issued on Arbitrum, Merlin, and BNB smart chains. In a statement to Cointelegraph, SolvBTC claimed that the protocol recently surpassed 10,000 BTC staking and attracted “over 92,000 participants” shortly after launching earlier this month.
Related: Memecoin, Bitcoin ecosystem revitalized with new protocol